How Journals Work
Academic journals are published one or multiple times per year. Issues are grouped into volumes. (Volume 3 of a journal might contain 1-4 issues.) Articles in academic journals are peer-reviewed, meaning that they have been read by experts in the field who advised the author on how to make the article stronger, more accurate, or more helpful to readers.
Journal issues might have special themes, meaning all the articles in one issue deal with a central topic.
How to Recognize a Scholarly Article
Library Tutorial 4: Using Research Databases
Recommended Databases
- Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
An unprecedented collection of peer-reviewed, full-text journals for academic research.
- SocIndex This link opens in a new window
Includes histories of social movements from a sociological perspective.
- MegaSearch This link opens in a new window
Search dozens of databases and the library catalog. Find articles, books, eBooks, videos, and more. This cross-curricular research database supports science, social studies, current events, and language arts classes. Informed, differing views help learners develop criticalthinking skills and draw their own conclusions.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowAcademic journals, books, and primary sources as well as current issues of journals in the humanities and social sciences.
- eHRAF - World Cultures This link opens in a new window"eHRAF World Cultures contains ethnographic collections covering all aspects of cultural and social life. eHRAF is unique in having subject indexing at the paragraph level. This allows detailed and precise searching for concepts not easily found with keywords." -eHRAF
Recommended Journals
Here are some relevant journals to get you started. To access these links, be sure you are logged into MyPima.
- American Anthropologist: American Anthropologist is the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association, reaching well over 12,000 readers with each issue. The journal advances the Association mission through publishing articles that add to, integrate, synthesize, and interpret anthropological knowledge; commentaries and essays on issues of importance to the discipline; and reviews of books, films, sound recordings and exhibits.
- American Ethnologist: American Ethnologist is a quarterly journal concerned with ethnology in the broadest sense of the term. Articles published in the American Ethnologist elucidate the connections between ethnographic specificity and theoretical originality, and convey the ongoing relevance of the ethnographic imagination to the contemporary world.
(All journal descriptions are from Scimago Journal & Country Rank. )
Parts of a Journal Citation
Confused about what goes in a citation for an academic article? Here's what to look for:
- Author: Get the full names of the authors. Some citation styles require full names, some don't - best to be prepared.
- Title: Make sure to get the whole title. Many article titles are separated by a semi-colon (:) and you need both parts.
- Journal Name: Did the article come from American Speech? Or Language in Society? Make a note of the journal's full title.
- Volume
- Issue: Sometimes the issue number will include a season, like "Fall."
- Year: Find the year the article was published by the journal. This information is usually near the volume / issue information.
- Page Numbers: Page numbers specify where in the journal your article is located. Make a note!
- URL: If the journal is an eJournal (meaning it is only published online), get the URL for the article.
- DOI: Not terribly important, but impressive! The DOI is a unique number associated with a journal article. If it's available, you can include it in the citation (and impress your friends).